24 Great Water Polo Ideas
for the 2024 Olympics
Some of these ideas are for USA Water Polo. Some are for World Aquatics. Without further ado, here are 24 great water polo ideas:
Make Water Polo gay again! Who loves men in Speedos? Who has disposable income for events and subscriptions? Who kept the WNBA alive until Caitlin Clark showed up? The gay community! Sell tickets to an all-star game in San Francisco. Promote it with the SF Tsunami club team. Send Alex Bowen in a small swimsuit down to IGLAs in Buenos Aires to gin up interest. Get the fandom going.
Get water polo on one streaming service! College water polo requires ESPN+, and the PAC 10 network. For national teams you need Peacock and something called Overnght (yes that’s a real thing). LEN is on Youtube sometimes. What are we doing? Let’s get down to either one network per level or 2 services total. I am a huge water polo fan and I never know what’s on or how to get to it.
Make some g****** money! Create a sellable item. Basketball fans buy jerseys. Baseball fans buy hats. Water polo fans buy….? We need something for club teams and national teams to sell for supports. Winter hats that look like caps? Robes? High quality towels? We need something sell. We need to feed our families Technical Director Molnar.
Change the camera angles. Get closer. Get a cameraman with a go pro floating behind a goal. Get a drone on a sideline. Make the Olympic water polo look impressive and different than previous broadcasts. Other sports are always iterating. We should at least use technology other sports pioneered years ago. GoPros are old enough to drink legally in all fifty states. Get on it.
Use a heads-up-display to identify players. I’m not saying all Serbians look alike but in the water it’s hard to tell, especially when the events are shot from so far away. Or get each starter a different level of tan.
Let the players use flair to express themselves (and so we can recognize them). Rec specs, magic marker, fake tattoos (nothing political). The players are so hard to tell apart.
Make Flava Flav a special correspondent. I never would have thought of his Clockness as a water polo booster, but the relationship between Flav and the women’s team has generated positive attention so far. Keep it going. Get him on the bench. We don’t need an assistant coach to run subbing. Get Flav on the bench asking Maggie Steffens what the hell is going on. “Maggie, what’s ‘inside water’?”
Hire influencers to help TEAM USA (any country could copy this) make content on TikTok. These athletes are young, good looking, in amazing shape, and athletic. People will like them.
Let them fight! Basketball fans love FIBA/Olympic reffing because of the physicality. NBA players who rely on drawing fouls like Joel Embiid have been struggling in warmup games, because the refs are on the lookout for players being too dramatic. Water polo should follow suit. The game has become too much about acting and splashing away from the ball at hole set. Let the players be rough. Get the underwater cameras out. Let Hallock get his licks in. No more 4 minute power plays. People might like a bit more blood in the water.
The Olympics should use smaller venues for water polo. The current seating is far away from the athletes. Games should have energy like hockey or basketball. Those indoor sports play in small venues and put the fans up close. I want fans with their feet the water sitting below the refs. I want Nikola Jokic screaming in the ref’s ear during a Serbia semifinal.
Switch to Elam ending for exciting finishes. For those who don’t know, in the fourth quarter you just play until a certain score is reached. So if the score is 13-7, you play until one team reaches 16. If the score is 5-5, you play until someone gets to 8. Every game would end on a game winner. No more boring stalling finishes.
Wear warm-up swimsuits that actual humans might wear to the beach. This will help cultivate the idea of water polo gear for sale that people might buy with USA Water Polo on it.
Offensive players don’t wear caps during a shootout. It might show more personality. There’s no reason for ear protection when the game is over.
Do a barnstorming tour of the country’s local masters and college club teams. Get people excited by seeing national team players in town crushing the local good players or an all-star team of college players from the towns on the tour (2 Harvard guys, a Florida woman, players from Texas, etc).
Host a tournament with a ProAm in a pool with good camera angles just to get good action shots to use for promotional material. All the National League footage is washed out and hard to watch.
At Masters Nationals and JOs try experimental rules is consolation games based on changes that might be on the table after the Olympics. It won’t affect who wins the tournament, and USA Water Polo can be proactive about recommendations to the World Aquatics Water Polo Technical Committee.
Create a simple water polo themed phone game. It could even be a Bejeweled ripoff with water polo balls as the shapes. Anything to spread the word about water polo.
World Aquatics should mic the benches. If we can hear the radios on F1, we can hear the benches scream when they get an iffy call against them. It doesn’t have to be live sound (to screen for cursing etc), but it would give the teams more visible personalities.
USA Water Polo and World Aquatics should experiment with AI upscaling of video to give highlights more detail. The Water Dragon channel on YouTube has some examples of the tech made shortly after the last Olympics. The results are interesting.
World Aquatics could make in game penalty shots more exciting. Some ideas from readers: require goalies to take the penalty shots so that after misses there’s a scramble to get back on defense, allow a penalty shot to be taken from 7 meters for two points, add a sensor to the cage to automatically detect if the penalty shot was scored.
Use the games to focus group potential fans about the sport. Figure out why people have not latched onto water polo. Analyze the difference in the broadcast experience and in person experience between water polo and other more successful sports.
Water Polo interest peaks with the Olympics every four years (except for 2020 which was famously rescheduled for 2021). World Aquatics and USA Water Polo should come in with something to promote: LEN, NCAA water polo, the National League, youth programs. You need to capitalize on interest while you have it. Don’t just focus on participation. Water polo is a hard sport. You need some form of fandom, not just a few more people playing. Create or promote something for people to watch or attend if people are interested. Give people a chance to throw their money at water polo.
Hire Total Water Polo to create coverage with access for the Olympics. Their site is fanatical. They’re insiders who the players trust. Their criticisms of World Aquatics are mild. I bet they’ll be in attendance. Get them maximum access and let them do the storytelling.
Hire me to do the first 23.
Let me know what I missed in the comments!
Some ideas submitted by our readers that didn’t make the cut:
“…play in the nude.” (submitted by Sam Nasuti)
Biden at every match now that he’s more available (submitted by Ramon Guerra)
Teams named after dinosaurs (submitted by Jasi Abuhoff, age 3)
Add a greased up water melon (multiple readers)
“Play some sick beats during the game.” (submitted by Barry King)
Hot Synchro cheerleaders (submitted by Nicolle Jasbon)
I really hope these ideas get passed along to USAWP. Any of these, as funny as they are, would do wonders to at least create buzz about our sport! Also, why is Australia/USC's Tilly Kearns the only water polo player who has a YouTube channel?! More of our athletes need to follow suit and create content to get the next generation excited about our sport, not just in a recreational setting/or a way to get to college, but as a way of life!